‘Irrespective of the fact our old kings pilfered it from some other old kings in the first place?’ said Civilai.
‘It belongs — through the statute of limitations on the possession of regal booty — to Laos,’ she told him.
‘You just made that up,’ said Civilai. ‘It’s extortion paid by vassal states to a tyrant. At the worst they’re stolen goods.’
‘And they’re our stolen goods and I’m not handing them over to the Vietnamese without a fight. Siri?’
‘Yes, my love?’
‘What are you grinning about?’
‘It’s not a grin. It’s a smile of admiration. There’s nothing “used to be” about you. The fire never burned out. You’re as much in love with Laos as you were back then.’
‘And you, old man?’ she said. ‘Are you tired of fighting for this nation of lotus eaters?’
‘Never.’
‘Then let’s not invest all our faith in this stupid curse. Let’s put together a plan B.’
‘I think a plan B might involve a lot of sleeping under trees,’ said Civilai. ‘Digging a boat out of sixty-eight years of silt is no easy matter.’
Like the north-easterly monsoons and feather-duster salesmen, Inspector Phosy was relentless. If something was blocking his path he would chip a way into it until a breakthrough could be made. There were two large rocks currently sitting in front of him and he hadn’t made much of an impression on either of them. The Housing Department had confirmed that Comrade Koomki was missing. The inspector had collected a good deal of evidence that Dr Siri was a mortal enemy of the Housing Allocations head but nothing at all to tie the deceased to the Frenchman. One more setback was that Sergeant Sihot was stuck in a clinic in Xanakham with chronic diarrhoea. He didn’t make it to Pak Lai.
Phosy had also heard back from Vietnam. The reply came via their Intelligence Unit. They had a sprawling complex behind their embassy but seemed to operate independently. Nobody knew what intelligence was being gathered there or why they’d been allowed to set it up in the first place. Phosy recalled that Civilai had lobbied without success to have it shut down.
One result of the recent agreement of friendship and cooperation signed with Hanoi was that the Vietnamese were reluctantly obliged to be friendly and cooperative. This extended to a relationship between law enforcers in both countries. The fax he held in his hand was a perfect example of ‘minimum cooperation’:
Madame Saigna Peung, a Lao citizen, was in possession of a multiple laissez-passer to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In the past twelve months she has made eight visits. Her papers were cleared each time at Hanoi International Airport. Before this last trip the average time of her stay was three days. Her last recorded visit was in July 1978 and she was in the country for eighteen days.
Madame Saigna Peung had dealings with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam trade office and was involved in importing goods to Vietnam. There is no record of appointments after the third day of this most recent trip. No more information is available.
Signed, Dac Kien. Hanoi Police and International Cooperation and Friendship Representative.
‘No more information is being released, more like it,’ thought Phosy as he walked up the hill to Madame Peung’s luxury house with a view. And what was she doing there for such a long time on this last trip? He doubted she wouldn’t have been followed at least some of that time. It was the socialist way. Surely she hadn’t just disappeared. Phosy had said his hellos in the village, told them he’d be interviewing them individually later, but declined company to visit the house. His first action was to sit in the wooden recliner on the veranda looking down at the village and across the fields to the mountains of Ban Elee. Marx had said, ‘The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.’ Phosy felt the rich on his back as he sat there in front of the big house. What happened to the even distribution of wealth they’d crooned about at the seminars?
But this was not his concern today. He stood and asked the building what had happened on those two weird nights of August. There was no evidence of a break-in at the front door. In fact, you’d probably have needed an armoured car to get through it as the iron latch on the inside had apparently been welded together by a team of swarthy blacksmiths. The rear door had the same impressive apparatus. The windows were all barred. The widow was clearly afraid of losing her money. But there was no evidence anywhere of a forced break-in. He thought about the live-in girl. Whether she might have opened the door for her boyfriend and made up the whole story about being asleep when it happened. On his way to Ban Elee, Phosy had stopped off at the district administration office. He knew a young girl with no travel papers wouldn’t be very far from her residence. In fact she was still registered in her grandmother’s house and hadn’t applied for transit papers. The house was only four kilometres away. He would visit her next.
But, for now, he sat in the main bedroom where a killing had purportedly taken place there on the double bed. The mattress was uncovered now and a bloodstain had taken a huge bite out of it around the area of the pillow. This meant that the victim was either asleep or calmly lying back in her bed when she was shot. So it was unlikely she’d opened the door to her killer, and more likely that the door was unlocked or the killer was in there with her.
The distance from the door to the bed was only four metres, yet there was no bullet embedded in the wooden wall behind the bed. Again it was conceivable the bullet bounced around inside the skull and did indeed go to the pyre with the victim but so much blood suggested an exit wound. There should have been a bullet.
Finally, back on the porch. Here it was that the drugged robber had supposedly dragged the widow to the front steps and, in front of the entire village, shot her for the second time. ‘The bullet went into the wooden post,’ they’d said. The village headman had retrieved a.45 bullet and given it to the policeman as a souvenir. Phosy found the hole. It was a teak post so the bullet hadn’t sunk deeply into it. It would have been retrievable with a penknife. But there was something far more telling than the bullet: the hole itself. He turned back towards the house but something odd on the wooden step caught his attention. It was a second hole, easily missed, neat, the same size as the one in the post. And, after a few minutes of gouging with his penknife, it was here that Phosy found a second bullet. It was a.45.
A picture was forming in Phosy’s mind. A scenario so bizarre no fiction writer would insult his readers by offering it up as a plausible plot. To make it credible, there had to be more, much more, going on here in Ban Elee than a meeting with the supernatural. Madame Daeng’s instincts had been fired by accounts of events that appeared to be impossible. Now, Phosy was charged with the task of proving that the impossible wasn’t so hard after all. Down in the village, his questions were simple. Did Madame Peung shop at the market? No, not since her husband died. She’d become something of a recluse. She sent her live-in girl. Did anybody else have cause to go to the house? No. Apart from the fact that she suddenly had a Vietnamese accent, did you notice any changes between Madame Peung and Madame Keui? Perhaps she’d put on a little weight. Oh, and she’d started using more make-up. She’d always liked to slap on the colour but she’d never used that much before.
Phosy was on his way to meet the live-in girl but he was quite sure he knew what had transpired there in Ban Elee. The only thing he lacked was a motive.
13